Ambiguity attitudes and surprises: Experimental evidence on communicating new information within a large population sample
Journal
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
ISSN
0167-2681
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2024-12
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper investigates ambiguity attitudes for natural events (temperatures) and how they are updated following new information. Using a general population sample, we first obtain baseline ambiguity attitudes for future weather events based on real temperatures over several past days. Second, we study the influence of different communication types on updating the ambiguity attitudes: participants are given either point estimators, interval estimators, or the combination of both as weather forecasts. We further vary whether the forecast is surprising or in line with the initially received information. In contrast to claims that ambiguity aversion may increase in response to surprising news, we find that ambiguity attitudes are rather robust to new information and variants of their communication. Yet, different variants of communicating new information significantly change the belief updating process and affect the matching probabilities given to specific events. Our sample allows us to analyze socio-demographic correlates of ambiguity attitudes and the updating of ambiguity attitudes to new information.
Language
English (United States)
Keywords
Ambiguity Attitude
Belief Updating
Expert Forecasts
Survey Experiment
Refereed
yes
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
228
Official URL
Subject(s)